The David Olusoga fan club (otherwise known as the Historycal Roots team) were out in force at the National Portrait Gallery in London recently for his talk ‘Through the Glass Darkly: Black History and Portraiture’. David can be relied on to give an interesting talk and this session, in spite of his admission that he is a historian rather than an art historian, was no exception.
Focusing on the Georgian period, he used a small number of paintings to illustrate his talk about the doubtful status of Black people in that period. He opened with two relatively well known portraits: one of Equiano (although David suggested it may actually be of a young Ignatius Sancho) and one that is definitely of Sancho. Black figures in other paintings of the period are invariably anonymous and peripheral, in the painting to signify the wealth and status of the painting’s main subject. The black figures are often ‘exotically’ (and inappropriately) costumed, shown holding exotic fruits and painted with a pearl earring to enhance the contrast with their Black skin.
Estimates of the number of Black people in the UK (mainly London) during this period vary widely from 3,000 up to 60,000 and the lack of hard evidence about their lives is clearly frustrating for historians. Much of the evidence that does exist comes from adverts placed concerning people who had run away from their masters. They were frequently accused of theft on two counts: they had ‘stolen’ their own body which was owned by their master; and they had stolen the slave collar worn to help identify them if they ran away. It wasn’t until the famous Somerset case of 1772 that the legal position was clarified to make it clear that, oversimplifying somewhat, a Black man could not be a slave on UK soil.
The question and answer session after the talk was also interesting. Clearly we can’t repeat it all here but, in connection with how Black history is taught in schools, David recalled a school visit he had made as a child to a cotton mill in Lancashire. The entire process of spinning raw cotton into yarn and the subsequent sale and distribution of cloth (a mainstay of the UK economy at the time) was explained in minute detail. but there was no reference to the system of slave labour by which the cotton was produced. David made the point that at some stage omitting to tell a key part of the story is equivalent to a lie. Seen in this light the omission of Black people from history begins to look less like an accident and more like a deliberate strategy.
Afterwards there was a book signing. Although we already have signed copies of his books this didn’t stop us having a chat!
